This is our first of many roundups from Etsy to come. Etsy is great place to shop for many home decor pieces, especially Scandinavian ones. Scandinavian style is characterized by minimalism, simplicity, and functionality. This Nordic style has become more and more popular these days and is fortunately pretty easy to execute. We welcome you to explore more of this style on our blog as we continue to post design inspiration, steals, and deals.

Just like a bouquet of flowers, a gift basket should have a nice color palette, beautiful arrangement including varying heights and fullness, and quality products (while in a bouquet that would mean young and healthy flowers – in this case it means gourmet or homemade food items). And not unlike flowers, your gift needs the right container – a beautiful basket or box to hold all that is to come.

This gift basket in particular, is a housewarming gift for a very dear friend of ours. We knew we wanted to get her something kitchen and food related because we figured, ‘Hey, you can never have too much good food in the house’. We bought everything in this picture in one store and you can too. We chose to shop at HomeGoods but you can also do this at Cost Plus World Market, Whole Foods, Bristol Farms – you get the idea. We went with HomeGoods because we knew we could get gourmet items on a college girl’s budget.

As you can see above, we really wanted to stick with earthy, copper tones for the basket. Initially when we went shopping, we decided to put anything and everything that caught our eye in our basket. Well, we ended up having a VERY full basket. To narrow it down we decided to come up with themes – red toned, baking, sweets, savory, blues – you get the idea. Finally we settled on copper.

Because we were already at a savings store, we didn’t pay too much attention to the prices but if you’re on a stricter budget you can easily make a basket just as a beautiful with a cheaper price tag. Just to get an idea of the cost we’ve listed the receipt below.

If you’ve been following our blog then you probably know by now that I will be attending school in the fall and Brooke will be attending in the winter. A couple of weeks ago, we started a roundup of fantastic & affordable men’s backpacks and promised to follow up with other versions. Today we’ve decided to focus on women’s backpacks. We hope you enjoy them, and if you happen to know of any great backpacks $150 or under, please let us know and we’ll try to include it in this list!!!

As a graphic design nerd, and having recently been making paper cake toppers, I have been on the hunt for the perfect calligraphy font. I’ve rounded up a few script style types that have a very natural, inky look to them. If you are a font aficionado like me then stick around for a while as I’ll be posting more fonts every week. Discover more about these fonts in the links below!

Velvet sofas can add style and class to any room. They are also luxuriously soft. What more could you want? With so many colors, styles, and sizes to choose from, you can find a sofa that’s the perfect match for your living room.

But we have a confession to make: not all of these are velvet. Some of these are microfiber or microvelvet, but they have a similar look and feel to velvet and so they are a good choice for those who are budget conscious.

So you’re throwing your friend a birthday bash. You’ve sent out the invites, dressed up the living room, put up the “Happy Birthday!” banner, and taken the cake out of the oven. It’s a beautiful cake—it looks like you’ve just gotten it personally decorated by the best baker in town.

Okay, not really, but it could. Homemade cakes are delicious, and they should look as good as they taste. You want a cake that will make the birthday boy or girl’s eyes light up when they see it for the first time. Something really special that they will remember for a long time to come. And if it’s for a party, your cake should be an attention grabber.

But that doesn’t mean it has to be difficult and time consuming. Browse through our favorite cake toppers (many of them simple DIYs) to inspire your soon-to-be beautiful cake or cupcakes. Now pour yourself a shot—because throwing a party is stressful!—frost that cake and get decorating.

Printable Floral Element DIY: Sorry folks, no link for this one. But it would be pretty easy to duplicate by printing out whatever design you like!

Playful Puppet Cake Toppers: These paper puppet templates can be found in the back of the book Playful. They easily dress up any cake, homemade or store bought. You can find the template and book here. (via Mer Mag Blog)

With classes starting up again in the fall, I have begun my search for a new backpack. Like many students before me, my previous backpacks have failed me. Every year for the last three years, I have started the school year with a new backpack and ended the school year with one I hate. The first backpack ended with a broken zipper, the second was just plain ugly (it looked nothing like the picture online!), and the third ended with holes in the bottom of my bag. This year I am determined to find myself the right match… just not quite yet. During my search, I couldn’t help but notice all the great men’s backpacks this year and I thought I would share it with you.

Before you take a look at the backpacks, there are some considerations you may want to think about. For me, size and comfort are really important. What about you?

Do you need a laptop sleeve? A grab handle? Do you want an organizer panel for small items like pencils, sticky notes, and calculators? Is an accessory pocket important? What about a pocket for your water bottle?

Now that I’ve got you thinking, here is a roundup of some of our favorite men’s backpacks. All of these backpacks are under $125 (who knew backpacks could get so pricey?) Some are more affordable than others.

Many of these are offered in a variety of colors and these backpacks all vary in size so look through to find your future bag with the corresponding links listed below.

Welcome to our blog. Our names are Devon & Brooke and we are thrilled to be starting our new blog, The Twins Next Door. As this is our first post we wanted to tell you a little bit about ourselves and what we want to accomplish with our little blog. If it wasn’t obvious from the title, the two of us are twins (identical). We are 23 and are soon to be renting our first apartment together in a new city. We are originally from the LA area, but are moving up to Northern California so that one of us (Devon) can complete her Bachelor’s Degree at UCD. Meanwhile, Brooke plans on continuing her work as a hairstylist and working on her creative ventures.

We want to take all of you readers on our adventures as we decorate, travel, eat, read, photograph, and design. We hope you will find the The Twins Next Door useful and informative, as well as amusing and fun, when looking for design tips, delicious recipes, interesting stories, smart buys, DIYs, before & afters, hair & beauty tips, and more. We hope this site inspires, excites, and motivates you to do something new! Learn to cook a new dish or decorate a cake, try a new hairstyle, get a free printable, find the perfect sofa, or even learn how to navigate a college or city for the first time.

We want to share our experiences and we hope you share your experiences with us in turn! Please leave us comments, shoot us an email, follow our Pinterest page, or subscribe to blog. 😉